Geek Basics

The Pattern on the Stone, written for literary agent John Brockman's Science Masters series, is a guide for nongeeks in basic computer lore. Danny Hillis's text hits historical developments from George Boole's 19th-century strides in logic to Alan Turing's 1930s ideas on the nature of computational machines. We get a quick tour of programming and the nuts and bolts of our mechanical companions.

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But this is more than a dry lecture on how processors and programs do their stuff. Hillis, a veteran of the MIT Media Lab known for his work as Disney's chief imagineer, briefly visits frontier issues as well, and his underlying theme is a consideration of how we might build computers capable of performing on the level of the most marvelous device we know – the brain. His conclusion is thoughtfully optimistic – and appealing even to a skeptic.

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